when the sky groaned and cracked and the playful waters became a dark column of lethal hose, killing most everyone on impact and churning up the muck from deep underground. The Nightjar party turned back quick and began their ascent back into the upper altitudes, looking back now and then in concern at this grave problem without any evident solution to it. The waters never ceased pouring into that valley, nor did the mystery of the matter ever find resolution. Its waters filled the lowlands and joined together with the distant ocean, destroying most of the farmland of Lith. Nothing to be done about it. Just another concerning reminder that no one escapes this life alive. They returned home to a blanket of blue haze, so dense it was there was no difference between the outdoors and the indoors in that drafty old lady, Spider Heaven. They hoped that if she only slid downhill a half mile, they might be clear of the smoke choking the upper boundaries of the range and well-short of the flooding below. There were rumors about the two events, the fires and the whelkin cracking, being the work of the Red Devil Coven, but that was generally the blame for any sort of evil.. like the rains from space some years ago that mutated part the population some years ago. But since that time, all the mutants had gone to live underground so that matter was mostly out of sight, out of mind.
